E C Tubb, page 6
"In a couple of weeks."
"How about a man coming to wrap up the story?"
"Why not? Have him here in, say, twelve days."
After they had gone, Erica, standing in the swift-fallen tropic night, said thoughtfully, "Twelve days, Kurt. That means they'll have him here in eight."
"Which means we must be ready to leave in five."
"Which means you've got to make the final selection of personnel," she said. "I've the short list with me." She stared at it in the starlight. "How about Stanislac? You've met him and he likes you. Also he has good reason to volunteer."
"His wife. I know."
"She just vanished, Kurt. Along with the other two hundred in the _Pelican._ He's hot to go after who or what was responsible."
"Too hot. No."
"He has motive and -- "
"No!" Varl looked at her. "How often do I have to tell you? He's too raw with regard to his emotions. Forget him."
"And Calton?"
Varl remembered the way the man had yielded to his bluff when they had played poker. "No."
"Machen?" She sighed when he nodded. "Ritter?"
A cog traveling a set path; courier training did little to encourage initiative. "No."
"Asner?" She folded the scrap of paper. "He's good, Kurt. One of the best hydee engineers alive."
"He didn't tell me that."
"He wasn't supposed to. Well?"
Varl remembered the deft way Asner had handled the cards -- understandable now he knew Jarl's true occupation. The engineer was a big man, calm, able to handle an argument and to keep the peace.
"I'll take him. Add Cole and Owen."
"And Stacey?"
"If he checks out."
"He does. No emotional hang-ups, no phobias, no aberrations. With the rest, that should do it. I've
already chosen the women -- I'll let you have their dossiers in the morning." She turned to stand silhouetted against the night, face toward the glare and bustle around the _Odile._ "Five days," she murmured. "And then -- "
She broke off to turn and look at the sky, at the stars blazing like a scatter of diamonds against the black velvet of space, and she shivered -- in fear.
--------
*CHAPTER 9*
THE hull was completed on the first day. On the second, the generators were trued and their internal adaptations finished. The third saw the armament installed together with the tracking and firing controls: guns that could be fired directly or by remote direction, lasers able to shear through armor plate, and others which vented an assortment of missiles. This was Owen's domain, and he fussed over the instruments of destruction as if they were precious gems.
Cole was in charge of communications. He arrived with Asner on the fourth day, and both men set immediately to work. Stacey was the doctor.
"Orders from Earth Confederation," Stacey had said. "From the Comptroller himself. All officers are to be given hypnotuition. Now that the crew has finally been chosen, we may as well get on with it."
"Why wasn't I told?"
"You were." Stacey was patient. "If you check your communications, Captain, you'll find one dated a week ago. I guess you've been too busy to read your mail."
This was true and Varl knew it, but hearing it did not excuse his lapse.
"It won't take long," Stacey said. "The tape is pretty short -- mostly the latest update on all relevant material applicable to Kreutzal's equations. The rest covers the use of the hydee modifications on the _Odile._ Shall we start?"
"With that?" Varl looked at the band the doctor carried: a strap fitted with electrodes -- something he had seen before.
"Subjective teaching," Stacey said. "The impulse impinges directly on the cortex and -- but I guess you know about that."
He would know; Varl's dossier would have yielded the information on his past experience, essential if the doctor was to work at optimum efficiency. Now, as Stacey fitted the band, he said, "Nothing to worry about. You'll just feel a tingle and it'll be over. All set? Here we go!"
The tingle lasted too long. Van felt his nerves tense and muscles contract as, softly, a whine grew in his ears. The unimportant side effect was the result of cerebral adjustment to the new stimuli registering as sound. To others it could be flashes of light, a prickle in the tongue, or a jerk of the knee.
Time slowed, though he was not aware of it. His perceptions changed a little as if he had been thrown into a light trance, and for a moment he felt as if something were thrusting itself into his brain, a sensation gone as soon as registered.
"Done!" Stacey reached forward and removed the band. "You'll have a headache for about thirty minutes, then it will vanish and you'll begin to realize you know a lot more than you thought you did about the subjects mentioned. Who should I take next?"
"Asner." The hydee engineer would need to know before the others. "Then take them as they come.
All of them, the women too."
"I was going to ask you about that." Stacey tucked the band into its holder on the case he held. "As I understand it, this is a chancy operation -- need we take women at all?"
"You object? Why? Do you think women are weak? Inferior?"
"Neither. As a doctor I know that every woman sees more blood and experiences more pain than a dozen average men. They live with it. And they aren't inferior in any way. No. I'm thinking about the complications. Put men and women together and you create associations. Then, if something happens to one, the other is affected. Made less effective."
"You could be right," Varl said. "But the women stay."
"Then that's the end of it -- you're the captain. I'll get on with it now."
"Do that. And do something else. Tell everyone you treat -- every crew member, that is -- to be at hut 62S at dusk this evening. Everyone. No exceptions. And, Doctor, you'd better bring restoratives with you."
Alone, Varl resumed his checking. The figures blurred, and the promised headache was like a hammer pounding at his temples. Either the treatment was too strong or his own subconscious resistance was too high -- whatever the reason, the pain was enough to ruin his concentration. Outside he noted the relative quiet; where before the area around the ship had been a bedlam, now birdsong could be heard from the surrounding vegetation. Tomorrow there would be nothing but scarred dirt where the ship now rested. The _Odile_ would have gone, leaving Earth Confederation to clean up the mess. Kalif should be good at it -- he had had time to practice.
On a whim Varl walked due north away from the work area and into the thick mass of growth. The air was dry and the fronds dusty; small blooms showed yellow among the dull brownish green. The stridulation of insects stilled as he neared, resumed when he passed. The sun was hot on his head and shoulders; the heat intensified his headache. When the hammers turned into pile drivers, he turned and retraced his steps and almost fell over a man lying in the brush.
Sam Mboto rose, defiant, camera in hand.
"Spying?" Varl glanced at the instrument, the recorder slung around the strong neck. "What do you hope to find?"
"The truth."
"You've had it."
"The real truth. That mush you gave out wasn't it and you know it. I don't know what you're hiding, man, but I figure on finding out."
"By sticking your nose into private business?"
"Private?" Mboto shrugged, brushing scraps of dusty leaves from his clothing, batting an insect from his cheek. "What's an officer of Earth Confederation doing working on a private project? And why should a major take orders from a captain -- The blonde, Major Erica Borken. I saw her a year ago when doing a stint at Polar North. And you made a mistake in firing Werne."
"A fool."
"Maybe, but he hates your guts. I fed him booze and pumped him dry. And I did some checking.
And I decided to come out here and find out what I could." He swatted another insect. "You could make it easy."
"If you're right I could have you buried."
"That too -- if you're that kind of a man. But there are those who know what I'm doing."
A possible lie, but even if it was true, Mboto must know how weak such a defense would be. With the ship gone, and the weight of Earth Confederation backing the cover-up, how long would the disappearance of one stubborn news hound be remembered?
Yet he had guts: courage enough to return at night, to crouch in the brush, waiting, watching; the stamina to be patient.
Varl glanced at the canteen and the pack of food lying close to the spot where Mboto had lain.
"What makes you feel so deeply about this? Pride in your job?"
"That and more. I majored in history and specialized in the pre-D era -- the French Revolution and onward. That's when the rot really set in; the manipulation of information, the cynicism of politicians, the corruption of governments. God, the things that happened! Well -- never again!"
"That's what those early revolutionaries must have said. But what happened? The serfs got rid of one tyranny and were saddled with another. France, Russia, China -- " Varl shrugged. "You know the pattern."
"One which blew up in their faces," Mboto said. "But things are different now. We have computer voting, referenda, obligatory consultation with the public. The old days when things were arranged behind closed doors are over. Free information and an aware public are the guarantee of liberty. That's why the smell of secrecy is a stink in the nostrils."
"Sometimes it's for the best."
"Yeah, that's what they said in the old days." Mboto dug his shoe into the ground. "You know how this came about? There's another such place in the western Sahara, and India, and the Kazakhstan Plain.
Gas. Flame and germs and napalm. Starvation. And why? Because they'd had a gutful of having to kowtow to the leeches riding their backs. Those bastards!" His shoe gouged a miniature grave. "They sowed the wind and, by God, they reaped the whirlwind and the innocent paid. But not again.
Governments exist to serve the people and not the other way around. Some politicians would like to forget that. Are they starting up again?"
"No."
"Convince me."
"I'll do that," Varl said. "Tonight."
* * * *
The area had been cleared and hut 62S stood in an oasis of isolation. The interior had been stripped except for the humped bulk of a hologram projector. As Varl entered with Mboto at his side there was a momentary break in the murmur of conversation.
"The entire crew of the _Odile_," Varl explained to his guest. "If there seems a lot, it is because at all times we shall operate with a full duty crew. Six-hour watches, turn and turn about."
"No automatics?"
"We have those, too." Varl lifted his voice. "Your attention, please. Thank you. You have been assembled for indoctrination on the purpose of our operation. Some of you may guess at what it is, others may be better informed, but to all of you I say this -- once I start the recording there can be no change of heart. If you want to quit, now's the time to do it."
A man said, "What about the stranger?"
"Sam Mboto? I hope he will become our historian. If not he will keep silent." This was a promise; one way or another he would do that, but Varl did not elaborate. The technician standing beside the projector glanced at him and threw a switch.
As the lights dimmed, Varl began to speak. "This recording was made of a vessel found drifting half a parsec from Fomalhautt. She is the _Lewanna,_ a ship of the Harbor-Nezib line bound from Alshain to Sadalsuud. She carried three hundred and twenty-seven passengers and crew. The ship that discovered her was the _Shiemach_." As the last light died Varl added, "This is what they found."
And, again, he was in hell. There was no other word for it. There could be no other word for the things depicted in three dimensions and glowing color: the blood, the bone, the matted hair, the ripped clothing, the smashed furnishings, the dented plates, dangling lights, the obscene parody of the human shape. And there was more.
"God!" A woman cried, and Van heard the sudden retching. "Dear God!"
A man mouthed something before he too was silenced by rising bile. A girl screamed and screamed until someone swung a hand in a pistol report against her cheek, turning hysteria into a ragged sobbing.
The _Lewanna_ had carried three hundred and twenty-seven living, human beings -- the hell lay in the fact that not all were dead.
"No!" A woman shrieked as a hopping travesty of life came toward her. "No! No! No!"
A man -- alive despite the eyes which hung on his cheeks, the organs which dangled like ghastly fruit on the parody of his body -- twitched and stumbled on feet which looked like hands and extended in mute and helpless appeal hands which looked like feet.
Another thing crawled.
Something was plastered against a wall as if it had been an anatomical schematic; nerves, fat, bone, inner organs -- smears of blue and white and yellow and blue -- eyes which moved as they dribbled blood.
The great salon of the _Lewanna_ was now a charnel house in which the living envied the dead.
Varl stared at the depiction filling the interior of the hut. The assembled crew moved like ghosts through the visually solid images, blending with the scene, adding to its horror with shocked faces and wild eyes, with mouths open to scream or pray, with their vomit, their sweat, their stink of fear.
Shock, he knew, had caused the reaction -- the sudden and unexpected confrontation with sickening
reality, the sight and concept of injury and pain. The same shock had fired his own conditioned responses when he had first seen it, to sear his hands with remembered agony and his mind with the knowledge of the desperate hell the living had known. Mercifully, the depiction was of the past and the travesties which crawled and twitched in broken posturings had long been at rest.
The tape ended, and Varl stared at his crew in the glow of blossoming lights. Three women and a man had fainted. Others sat with their heads between their knees. Two were in a fetal position.
"Up!" He stormed among them, gripping, raising, the sting of his hand welting their cheeks. "Up, damn you! On your feet!" He saw the glint of Erica's hair, Asner's golden brownness. "Help me! Get them up and aware. Move!"
As they worked, he snapped to the technician standing at the projector, "Again."
"Captain?"
"Show it again!"
And again. And again. Until the screaming died and the fainting and the nausea ceased. Until repetition had numbed them and built a wall of detachment, creating the familiarity which enabled a surgeon to cut and slash and expose pulsating organs to his clinical eye.
Afterward, when they had left the hut, Mboto said, "Is that the story?"
"Yes." Varl looked at the man. Sweat pearled in the crisp wool of his hair and the dark skin was tinged with a gray. "Going to spill it?"
Mboto shook his head, turning to look up at the stars as Erica had done, shivering as she had shivered.
"What's out there?" he whispered. "What in God's name could have done a thing like that?"
--------
*CHAPTER 10*
THE Comptroller had lied; Kreutzal could not still be drifting in the great unknown. The problem would not be solved; the enemy would always be waiting, lurking out there among the stars. And even if Kreutzal's ship could be discovered, what would they find? Jelly smeared on the hull? Something crawling as it whimpered with a mouth shifted to its stomach? Crying with eyes set in its hands?
A skeleton wearing a cheerful grin tapped a bony hand on the metal of the ship. It wore Kalif's face, his eyes, his smile grown old with time -- a cunning smile, as the man was a master of deception. He tapped and tapped -- and vanished as Varl sat upright on his bunk, rubbing at his eyes.
He had lain down to ease the renewed throbbing of his temples and must have drifted to sleep. The tapping persisted, and he snapped an order at the closed door. Erica entered the cabin.
"You've caught me," he said. "Sleeping on the job."
"And liable to be whipped near to death." Her smile was a grimace. "But not this time -- you're off watch."
He glanced at the clock set in the bulkhead; he had dozed little more than an hour.
"That's no excuse. All snug?"
"Set and in the groove. You were rough last night."
"They'll get over it."
"Sure -- but I'll bet no one will want to eat meat for a while." She handed him an envelope. "This came a couple of hours ago. Congratulations!"
The envelope was open. It contained his master's certificate and an official document proclaiming his promotion to the rank of commander. Kalif's work, and, he guessed, a sop to gain and maintain his cooperation. Seeing his expression, Erica frowned.
"Aren't you pleased?"
"I don't need a certificate to make me a captain."
"It'll come in useful. As will the promotion. You'll need both if you want help from Earth Con worlds."
Fuel and supplies, ammunition for the guns and parts for the machines, replacements for the crew, perhaps -- the old bastard had thought of everything. Varl leaned back, feeling a growing satisfaction. He had a ship, arms, a crew, supplies -- and a universe to rove in. What chains had Kalif forged which as
yet remained invisible?
Varl rubbed his face again and rose. The headache was a nagging irritation, and he jerked open a cabinet and swallowed three pills dry. They stuck in his throat; nodding his thanks, he took the cup of water Erica handed him.
"If that pain's from Stacey's treatment, you'd better get him to check you out," she said. "Mine lasted about fifteen minutes, and even Mboto was normal after thirty-five. You wanted him treated, I assume?"
"I said all crew. He became one of us."
Mboto, now installed in a cabin with his equipment, was after the biggest story a news hound could hope to break -- a story Varl was sure would never be published.
"He must be crazy," Erica said.
"As you are? And the rest?"
"You too, Kurt."
"I had little choice," he reminded her. And now neither did the rest. Locked in the _Odile,_ they would stay with it all the way. How many would remain human? He said, "Is basic routine established with your women?"
"They know the drill." She added, "I've posted the fact of your promotion. It'll stop any arguments about rank. Not that there would have been any."
"How about a man coming to wrap up the story?"
"Why not? Have him here in, say, twelve days."
After they had gone, Erica, standing in the swift-fallen tropic night, said thoughtfully, "Twelve days, Kurt. That means they'll have him here in eight."
"Which means we must be ready to leave in five."
"Which means you've got to make the final selection of personnel," she said. "I've the short list with me." She stared at it in the starlight. "How about Stanislac? You've met him and he likes you. Also he has good reason to volunteer."
"His wife. I know."
"She just vanished, Kurt. Along with the other two hundred in the _Pelican._ He's hot to go after who or what was responsible."
"Too hot. No."
"He has motive and -- "
"No!" Varl looked at her. "How often do I have to tell you? He's too raw with regard to his emotions. Forget him."
"And Calton?"
Varl remembered the way the man had yielded to his bluff when they had played poker. "No."
"Machen?" She sighed when he nodded. "Ritter?"
A cog traveling a set path; courier training did little to encourage initiative. "No."
"Asner?" She folded the scrap of paper. "He's good, Kurt. One of the best hydee engineers alive."
"He didn't tell me that."
"He wasn't supposed to. Well?"
Varl remembered the deft way Asner had handled the cards -- understandable now he knew Jarl's true occupation. The engineer was a big man, calm, able to handle an argument and to keep the peace.
"I'll take him. Add Cole and Owen."
"And Stacey?"
"If he checks out."
"He does. No emotional hang-ups, no phobias, no aberrations. With the rest, that should do it. I've
already chosen the women -- I'll let you have their dossiers in the morning." She turned to stand silhouetted against the night, face toward the glare and bustle around the _Odile._ "Five days," she murmured. "And then -- "
She broke off to turn and look at the sky, at the stars blazing like a scatter of diamonds against the black velvet of space, and she shivered -- in fear.
--------
*CHAPTER 9*
THE hull was completed on the first day. On the second, the generators were trued and their internal adaptations finished. The third saw the armament installed together with the tracking and firing controls: guns that could be fired directly or by remote direction, lasers able to shear through armor plate, and others which vented an assortment of missiles. This was Owen's domain, and he fussed over the instruments of destruction as if they were precious gems.
Cole was in charge of communications. He arrived with Asner on the fourth day, and both men set immediately to work. Stacey was the doctor.
"Orders from Earth Confederation," Stacey had said. "From the Comptroller himself. All officers are to be given hypnotuition. Now that the crew has finally been chosen, we may as well get on with it."
"Why wasn't I told?"
"You were." Stacey was patient. "If you check your communications, Captain, you'll find one dated a week ago. I guess you've been too busy to read your mail."
This was true and Varl knew it, but hearing it did not excuse his lapse.
"It won't take long," Stacey said. "The tape is pretty short -- mostly the latest update on all relevant material applicable to Kreutzal's equations. The rest covers the use of the hydee modifications on the _Odile._ Shall we start?"
"With that?" Varl looked at the band the doctor carried: a strap fitted with electrodes -- something he had seen before.
"Subjective teaching," Stacey said. "The impulse impinges directly on the cortex and -- but I guess you know about that."
He would know; Varl's dossier would have yielded the information on his past experience, essential if the doctor was to work at optimum efficiency. Now, as Stacey fitted the band, he said, "Nothing to worry about. You'll just feel a tingle and it'll be over. All set? Here we go!"
The tingle lasted too long. Van felt his nerves tense and muscles contract as, softly, a whine grew in his ears. The unimportant side effect was the result of cerebral adjustment to the new stimuli registering as sound. To others it could be flashes of light, a prickle in the tongue, or a jerk of the knee.
Time slowed, though he was not aware of it. His perceptions changed a little as if he had been thrown into a light trance, and for a moment he felt as if something were thrusting itself into his brain, a sensation gone as soon as registered.
"Done!" Stacey reached forward and removed the band. "You'll have a headache for about thirty minutes, then it will vanish and you'll begin to realize you know a lot more than you thought you did about the subjects mentioned. Who should I take next?"
"Asner." The hydee engineer would need to know before the others. "Then take them as they come.
All of them, the women too."
"I was going to ask you about that." Stacey tucked the band into its holder on the case he held. "As I understand it, this is a chancy operation -- need we take women at all?"
"You object? Why? Do you think women are weak? Inferior?"
"Neither. As a doctor I know that every woman sees more blood and experiences more pain than a dozen average men. They live with it. And they aren't inferior in any way. No. I'm thinking about the complications. Put men and women together and you create associations. Then, if something happens to one, the other is affected. Made less effective."
"You could be right," Varl said. "But the women stay."
"Then that's the end of it -- you're the captain. I'll get on with it now."
"Do that. And do something else. Tell everyone you treat -- every crew member, that is -- to be at hut 62S at dusk this evening. Everyone. No exceptions. And, Doctor, you'd better bring restoratives with you."
Alone, Varl resumed his checking. The figures blurred, and the promised headache was like a hammer pounding at his temples. Either the treatment was too strong or his own subconscious resistance was too high -- whatever the reason, the pain was enough to ruin his concentration. Outside he noted the relative quiet; where before the area around the ship had been a bedlam, now birdsong could be heard from the surrounding vegetation. Tomorrow there would be nothing but scarred dirt where the ship now rested. The _Odile_ would have gone, leaving Earth Confederation to clean up the mess. Kalif should be good at it -- he had had time to practice.
On a whim Varl walked due north away from the work area and into the thick mass of growth. The air was dry and the fronds dusty; small blooms showed yellow among the dull brownish green. The stridulation of insects stilled as he neared, resumed when he passed. The sun was hot on his head and shoulders; the heat intensified his headache. When the hammers turned into pile drivers, he turned and retraced his steps and almost fell over a man lying in the brush.
Sam Mboto rose, defiant, camera in hand.
"Spying?" Varl glanced at the instrument, the recorder slung around the strong neck. "What do you hope to find?"
"The truth."
"You've had it."
"The real truth. That mush you gave out wasn't it and you know it. I don't know what you're hiding, man, but I figure on finding out."
"By sticking your nose into private business?"
"Private?" Mboto shrugged, brushing scraps of dusty leaves from his clothing, batting an insect from his cheek. "What's an officer of Earth Confederation doing working on a private project? And why should a major take orders from a captain -- The blonde, Major Erica Borken. I saw her a year ago when doing a stint at Polar North. And you made a mistake in firing Werne."
"A fool."
"Maybe, but he hates your guts. I fed him booze and pumped him dry. And I did some checking.
And I decided to come out here and find out what I could." He swatted another insect. "You could make it easy."
"If you're right I could have you buried."
"That too -- if you're that kind of a man. But there are those who know what I'm doing."
A possible lie, but even if it was true, Mboto must know how weak such a defense would be. With the ship gone, and the weight of Earth Confederation backing the cover-up, how long would the disappearance of one stubborn news hound be remembered?
Yet he had guts: courage enough to return at night, to crouch in the brush, waiting, watching; the stamina to be patient.
Varl glanced at the canteen and the pack of food lying close to the spot where Mboto had lain.
"What makes you feel so deeply about this? Pride in your job?"
"That and more. I majored in history and specialized in the pre-D era -- the French Revolution and onward. That's when the rot really set in; the manipulation of information, the cynicism of politicians, the corruption of governments. God, the things that happened! Well -- never again!"
"That's what those early revolutionaries must have said. But what happened? The serfs got rid of one tyranny and were saddled with another. France, Russia, China -- " Varl shrugged. "You know the pattern."
"One which blew up in their faces," Mboto said. "But things are different now. We have computer voting, referenda, obligatory consultation with the public. The old days when things were arranged behind closed doors are over. Free information and an aware public are the guarantee of liberty. That's why the smell of secrecy is a stink in the nostrils."
"Sometimes it's for the best."
"Yeah, that's what they said in the old days." Mboto dug his shoe into the ground. "You know how this came about? There's another such place in the western Sahara, and India, and the Kazakhstan Plain.
Gas. Flame and germs and napalm. Starvation. And why? Because they'd had a gutful of having to kowtow to the leeches riding their backs. Those bastards!" His shoe gouged a miniature grave. "They sowed the wind and, by God, they reaped the whirlwind and the innocent paid. But not again.
Governments exist to serve the people and not the other way around. Some politicians would like to forget that. Are they starting up again?"
"No."
"Convince me."
"I'll do that," Varl said. "Tonight."
* * * *
The area had been cleared and hut 62S stood in an oasis of isolation. The interior had been stripped except for the humped bulk of a hologram projector. As Varl entered with Mboto at his side there was a momentary break in the murmur of conversation.
"The entire crew of the _Odile_," Varl explained to his guest. "If there seems a lot, it is because at all times we shall operate with a full duty crew. Six-hour watches, turn and turn about."
"No automatics?"
"We have those, too." Varl lifted his voice. "Your attention, please. Thank you. You have been assembled for indoctrination on the purpose of our operation. Some of you may guess at what it is, others may be better informed, but to all of you I say this -- once I start the recording there can be no change of heart. If you want to quit, now's the time to do it."
A man said, "What about the stranger?"
"Sam Mboto? I hope he will become our historian. If not he will keep silent." This was a promise; one way or another he would do that, but Varl did not elaborate. The technician standing beside the projector glanced at him and threw a switch.
As the lights dimmed, Varl began to speak. "This recording was made of a vessel found drifting half a parsec from Fomalhautt. She is the _Lewanna,_ a ship of the Harbor-Nezib line bound from Alshain to Sadalsuud. She carried three hundred and twenty-seven passengers and crew. The ship that discovered her was the _Shiemach_." As the last light died Varl added, "This is what they found."
And, again, he was in hell. There was no other word for it. There could be no other word for the things depicted in three dimensions and glowing color: the blood, the bone, the matted hair, the ripped clothing, the smashed furnishings, the dented plates, dangling lights, the obscene parody of the human shape. And there was more.
"God!" A woman cried, and Van heard the sudden retching. "Dear God!"
A man mouthed something before he too was silenced by rising bile. A girl screamed and screamed until someone swung a hand in a pistol report against her cheek, turning hysteria into a ragged sobbing.
The _Lewanna_ had carried three hundred and twenty-seven living, human beings -- the hell lay in the fact that not all were dead.
"No!" A woman shrieked as a hopping travesty of life came toward her. "No! No! No!"
A man -- alive despite the eyes which hung on his cheeks, the organs which dangled like ghastly fruit on the parody of his body -- twitched and stumbled on feet which looked like hands and extended in mute and helpless appeal hands which looked like feet.
Another thing crawled.
Something was plastered against a wall as if it had been an anatomical schematic; nerves, fat, bone, inner organs -- smears of blue and white and yellow and blue -- eyes which moved as they dribbled blood.
The great salon of the _Lewanna_ was now a charnel house in which the living envied the dead.
Varl stared at the depiction filling the interior of the hut. The assembled crew moved like ghosts through the visually solid images, blending with the scene, adding to its horror with shocked faces and wild eyes, with mouths open to scream or pray, with their vomit, their sweat, their stink of fear.
Shock, he knew, had caused the reaction -- the sudden and unexpected confrontation with sickening
reality, the sight and concept of injury and pain. The same shock had fired his own conditioned responses when he had first seen it, to sear his hands with remembered agony and his mind with the knowledge of the desperate hell the living had known. Mercifully, the depiction was of the past and the travesties which crawled and twitched in broken posturings had long been at rest.
The tape ended, and Varl stared at his crew in the glow of blossoming lights. Three women and a man had fainted. Others sat with their heads between their knees. Two were in a fetal position.
"Up!" He stormed among them, gripping, raising, the sting of his hand welting their cheeks. "Up, damn you! On your feet!" He saw the glint of Erica's hair, Asner's golden brownness. "Help me! Get them up and aware. Move!"
As they worked, he snapped to the technician standing at the projector, "Again."
"Captain?"
"Show it again!"
And again. And again. Until the screaming died and the fainting and the nausea ceased. Until repetition had numbed them and built a wall of detachment, creating the familiarity which enabled a surgeon to cut and slash and expose pulsating organs to his clinical eye.
Afterward, when they had left the hut, Mboto said, "Is that the story?"
"Yes." Varl looked at the man. Sweat pearled in the crisp wool of his hair and the dark skin was tinged with a gray. "Going to spill it?"
Mboto shook his head, turning to look up at the stars as Erica had done, shivering as she had shivered.
"What's out there?" he whispered. "What in God's name could have done a thing like that?"
--------
*CHAPTER 10*
THE Comptroller had lied; Kreutzal could not still be drifting in the great unknown. The problem would not be solved; the enemy would always be waiting, lurking out there among the stars. And even if Kreutzal's ship could be discovered, what would they find? Jelly smeared on the hull? Something crawling as it whimpered with a mouth shifted to its stomach? Crying with eyes set in its hands?
A skeleton wearing a cheerful grin tapped a bony hand on the metal of the ship. It wore Kalif's face, his eyes, his smile grown old with time -- a cunning smile, as the man was a master of deception. He tapped and tapped -- and vanished as Varl sat upright on his bunk, rubbing at his eyes.
He had lain down to ease the renewed throbbing of his temples and must have drifted to sleep. The tapping persisted, and he snapped an order at the closed door. Erica entered the cabin.
"You've caught me," he said. "Sleeping on the job."
"And liable to be whipped near to death." Her smile was a grimace. "But not this time -- you're off watch."
He glanced at the clock set in the bulkhead; he had dozed little more than an hour.
"That's no excuse. All snug?"
"Set and in the groove. You were rough last night."
"They'll get over it."
"Sure -- but I'll bet no one will want to eat meat for a while." She handed him an envelope. "This came a couple of hours ago. Congratulations!"
The envelope was open. It contained his master's certificate and an official document proclaiming his promotion to the rank of commander. Kalif's work, and, he guessed, a sop to gain and maintain his cooperation. Seeing his expression, Erica frowned.
"Aren't you pleased?"
"I don't need a certificate to make me a captain."
"It'll come in useful. As will the promotion. You'll need both if you want help from Earth Con worlds."
Fuel and supplies, ammunition for the guns and parts for the machines, replacements for the crew, perhaps -- the old bastard had thought of everything. Varl leaned back, feeling a growing satisfaction. He had a ship, arms, a crew, supplies -- and a universe to rove in. What chains had Kalif forged which as
yet remained invisible?
Varl rubbed his face again and rose. The headache was a nagging irritation, and he jerked open a cabinet and swallowed three pills dry. They stuck in his throat; nodding his thanks, he took the cup of water Erica handed him.
"If that pain's from Stacey's treatment, you'd better get him to check you out," she said. "Mine lasted about fifteen minutes, and even Mboto was normal after thirty-five. You wanted him treated, I assume?"
"I said all crew. He became one of us."
Mboto, now installed in a cabin with his equipment, was after the biggest story a news hound could hope to break -- a story Varl was sure would never be published.
"He must be crazy," Erica said.
"As you are? And the rest?"
"You too, Kurt."
"I had little choice," he reminded her. And now neither did the rest. Locked in the _Odile,_ they would stay with it all the way. How many would remain human? He said, "Is basic routine established with your women?"
"They know the drill." She added, "I've posted the fact of your promotion. It'll stop any arguments about rank. Not that there would have been any."
